Jenny Day (born 1981),
lives and works as a painter and sculptor in Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA). She holds an MFA in Painting from the University of Arizona, a BFA in Painting from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of California Santa Cruz. Her recent exhibitions include Arte Laguna in Venice, Italy, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Korea, Museum of Art Fort Collins, Mesa Arts Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Blue Star Contemporary Museum in San Antonio, TX, and Elmhurst Museum in Chicago, IL. Day’s work has been supported by an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, a Puffin Foundation Grant, a Contemporary Forum Artist Grant from the Phoenix Art Museum, a Barron Purchase Award, and participation in Greenwich House Pottery, the Ucross Foundation, the Jentel Foundation, and the Playa Foundation For The Arts, among others.

Only rarely are there artists who have studied another subject in addition to painting. Jenny Day is one of these exceptions and it is unmistakable that her preoccupation with environmental studies has left clear traces in her thinking and her painting. Her pictures show us nature, but not as we know it from landscape painting, but she creates a world of her own. In her early works she worked a lot with collages, this technique is still recognizable in her acrylic works today.

Through her technique, Jenny Day manages to structure the picture planes, creating smooth, almost monochrome surfaces and many gestural elements, which are particularly evident in the painterly interaction with the animals. There are also unmistakable references to Surrealism. Animals are usually the main motifs; they are friendly creatures, turned towards us and yet in a strange way in fear and on the run. The peaceful animals are a symbol of the pristine nature that still exists in a world that is anything but intact, where the apocalypse is already lurking behind the facades. In her ceramic works, too, she uses her own handwriting to create figures and forms, which she takes directly from her immediate surroundings and devours as if nature and creatures had no air left to breathe. Jenny Day has found her very own and unmistakable way and style of dealing with the themes of our time, impressive, exciting, but never preachy and with great painterly power.